Expected South African batsmen to struggle against wrist spinners, says Kepler Wessels

Former South African cricketer Kepler Wessels was very critical about the recent 5-1 drubbing of the South African side against team India in the ODI series. Wessels remarked that the struggle of the Proteas batsmen against the quality Indian wrist spinners was an expected story. He went on to say that the South African batsmen are not used to playing a lot of wrist spinners.

Hence, their struggle did not come as a big surprise to him. As per the quotes in the Indian Express, Kepler Wessels remarked that he was not surprised by the performances of the Indian team either. He knew that the Indian side will be a very different unit in the limited overs format and hence their good show was a very deserved one.

“They struggled because most of the (current) South African batsmen hadn’t played against wrist spinners very much. They were taken by surprise by the quality of spin and they hadn’t seen anything like that before,” Kepler Wessels quoted.

“I wasn’t surprised by India’s performance as I knew going into the One Day series (after Tests) they are going to be competitive and they are a good One Day team. South Africa had a depleted side and they lost players through injuries (in the series) and their play against spinners was not good enough. India was the better side,” Wessels added.

On India’s tour of England

It is worth noting that the next major overseas tour of the Indian team will be the tour to England in July this year. Commenting on the same, Kepler Wessels hopes that the Indian team opts for warm up games. Interestingly, the Indian team did not opt for a warm up game when they had arrived in South Africa earlier this year. And their struggle was very much evident in the Test series.

“They should definitely have some warm up matches in England because it takes some time to get used to the English conditions. In Australia also there will be additional bounce, so one or a few warm-up matches will be a good idea,” noted the former cricketer.

“They should have had a warm-up match in South Africa. I am not saying that would have impacted on them winning the series, but it would have helped them to get used to the conditions,” he added further.

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